


These Facts We've Mistaken for Our Lives

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, but not really, giving ladies back their agency, post Widow Hunt, rikki's not dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 10:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say you can't miss something you've never had, but Natasha knows they're wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Facts We've Mistaken for Our Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the end of "Widow Hunt." Branching off canon from there. Title from "Making It Up" by Neal Bowers. Thanks to Snacky for looking it over.

The apartment is familiar, though more like some place she visited once than a place she actually lives. Her things are scattered about--her clothes in the closet and her taste in artwork on the walls--but it feels fake, like setup for an op, not like what passes for real life these days.

Steve wears an apologetic grimace and says, "If you need to talk, you know where to find me."

"I don't, and I do." She gives him a genuine, if small, smile. "Thanks."

He's too dignified to scurry, but he makes his escape as quickly as he can, leaving her alone again. 

She tries to let muscle memory guide her, and after a couple of false starts (why was she expecting guns in the linen closet?), she finds the tea she likes in the cabinet above the sink and a mug that feels like it belongs in her hand in the drain board beside it.

The bed has been stripped bare, so she makes it, tugging and smoothing the sheets until she's got perfect hospital corners. She wonders why there are only two pillows when she's got four pillow cases folded neatly and waiting to be filled, and then she shrugs. Ikea's not far away; it's easy enough to go there if she needs more pillows. She knows better than to dwell on some weird unremembered detail that seems like it should mean more than it does. Maybe she could convince Steve and Sharon to come, just for the ridiculousness of the three of them shopping at Ikea.

She spreads the comforter neatly over the bed and notices the cuff of a sleeve poking out from under the bed. It's not like her to kick her clothes under the bed, so she tugs it out and discovers the top half of a Captain America uniform, one sleeve shredded and barely hanging on by a thread. 

She's known Steve a long time but they've never--She purses her lips thoughtfully and heads upstairs to his apartment. 

"Is this why you've been so squirrelly?" she asks, holding out the shirt when he answers the door.

"Where did you get that?" His hand twitches, like he wants to snatch it away from her, but he curls it into a fist at his side instead.

She tilts her head and gives him a smile that's been known to make lesser men weep. "It was under the bed." She lets the smile dissolve. "If I owe Sharon an explanation or apology--"

"No," he says. "Nothing like that. I thought I'd gotten the place cleaned up, but I guess I missed something."

"I'll trade you for the extra pillows I seem to be missing," she says, and this time his mouth tightens and his jaw clenches.

"I'll get you some new ones," he says, plucking the uniform shirt from her hand. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a conference call I have to join."

It's only after she gets back to her apartment that she realizes she didn't ask him when he'd changed the white on his uniform sleeves to black.

*

Sam meets her for lunch a few days later, up near his office, but everything is weird, awkward. After the third time he starts to say something and stops, she says, "Sam, what is it you're not telling me?"

"I just want to state for the record that I had no part in this decision."

"So there is something." She knows there is but she wants him to say it, wants someone to look her in the eye when they're lying to her.

He ducks his head in acknowledgement. "But it's not my secret to tell."

"It never is." Natasha curls her lip in disgust. "I'd expected better of you, Sam." She drops some money on the table and leaves.

*

She stretches, getting ready to do a quick patrol around the city even though she hasn't been cleared for active duty yet. Perhaps she'll run into Spider-Man. She's always enjoyed working with him, and he'll talk enough for the both of them, so she won't have to keep up her side of the conversation and make everything uncomfortable the way she had with Sam.

Someone lands on the roof behind her, and she whirls, ready to fight, but it's just two teenage girls. Natasha recognizes Spider-Girl--she doesn't talk nearly as much as Peter does--but though the redhead seems vaguely familiar, Natasha can't come up with a name.

"Want some company?" Spider-Girl asks.

"Think you can keep up?" Natasha replies with a smile.

"Let's find out," says the redhead, tugging her goggles over her eyes. Her uniform is familiar, too, modeled on what Steve wore when he was Nomad. Natasha makes a note to ask him about her the next time she seems him. For now, she leads the two girls across the rooftops of Brooklyn, enjoying the stretch and pull of her muscles and the wind in her hair.

She supervises the girls as they stop a carjacking, and offers advice when they drop a rapist, judiciously wrapping her critiques in understated praise, but stays out of the fighting herself. She likes mentoring the younger women who take up the mask or the cape, and these two are already comfortable partners for each other. 

At the end of the evening, the redhead (who does call herself Nomad, after Steve), thanks her profusely, all out of proportion for a team-up she's sure Steve engineered.

"No, really," the girl says. "Thank you so much for everything you've done." She plucks at the top of her uniform. "I can't tell you how much it means to me."

Anya puts an arm around her shoulders and murmurs, "Dial it down, Rikki."

"You're very welcome," Natasha says, ignoring their embarrassment. Their enthusiasm warms her unexpectedly. "Pay it forward when you can."

"We will," Rikki promises, and Natasha leaves them on a roof in Queens, wrapped up in each other like they've already forgotten she was there. 

*

Natasha avoids Matt, and after his debacle with Jess and Cherry, Clint is avoiding her. She finds she's okay with that for now. She's spent most of her life being lied to and lying in return. She prefers it now when her friends don't lie to her, or, if it's a matter of operational security, that they either say that or get better at lying, because right now, all she knows is that there's something they know that she doesn't, and it shadows everything she thinks she does.

Her dreams are full of faces--people she's loved, people she's killed, people who've tried to kill her. Sometimes, they're one and the same. She remembers ice and fire, the sprightly lilt of Tchaikovsky and the smell of sweat and hairspray. She's covered in ashes and blood, and in her dreams, she doesn't know which memories are real and which are simply remnants of old lives she never actually lived.

She doesn't need much sleep. She makes herself a mug of tea and sits by the window, watching the sky lighten. 

They say you can't miss something you've never had, but Natasha knows they're wrong. 

*

She makes an appointment with Stephen Strange, arranges a lunch with Emma Frost. She's going to get back what she's lost, one way or another. 

The doctors clear her for active duty and she's just finished her workout when Sharon walks into the gym. Sharon nods and keeps walking, and Natasha remembers her conversation with Steve, the way he'd snatched his uniform back like he had something to hide.

"Sharon."

Sharon stops and turns, head cocked inquisitively. 

"If I owe you an apology," Natasha starts and then stops, because now Sharon looks puzzled.

"I can't imagine what for."

Natasha doesn't like feeling uncertain, not when it comes to people she considers friends. "You know that there are some new gaps in my memory."

Sharon's mouth twists. "Yes. I've heard." There's anger in her tone, and Natasha isn't sure it's directed at her.

"I found--The day they released me from medical and I went back to my apartment, I found the top of Steve's uniform kicked under the bed."

Sharon raises an eyebrow. " _Steve's_ uniform?"

"Yes. Captain America's uniform."

"Steve's not the only one to have worn that uniform," Sharon says. 

"He's the only one since the 1950s."

"What color were the sleeves?"

"Black. The sleeves were black."

"Come with me." They've never been touchy-feely with each other, but Sharon puts a hand on her elbow for a moment, the tips of her fingers warm against Natasha's skin, and steers her into the locker room. After they're seated on one of the low wooden benches, Sharon says, "Do you remember Steve being--gone?"

"He was assassinated," Natasha says. She elides the details of Sharon's involvement. "Tony asked me to take the shield someplace safe."

"And?" Sharon prompts.

"And I did?" Natasha hates that it's a question, hates the blank space where the memory should be. 

"In a manner of speaking," Sharon says dryly. "Listen, if I'd been there, I'd have made sure they told you the truth, because you deserve to know, and how you proceed is your decision, not anyone else's."

"Someone else has been making decisions for me?" Natasha tenses, anger coiling low in her belly.

"Novokov erased a very specific strand of your memory," Sharon says. "While Steve was gone, Bucky Barnes took over as Captain America."

"While I was in the hospital there was a man," Natasha says, allowing the deflection, since it provides her with more information. "He hovered outside the room. He seemed to know me but I--I didn't know him. We worked together while Steve was gone?"

"Yeah," Sharon says, "among other things."

"Sharon." Natasha's voice is sharp. "Please don't be coy."

"You lived together. You were very much in love. You'd both been through a lot of bad shit, but it looked like you were going to be together for the long haul." Her mouth quirks. "It was kind of sweet."

"And Novokov stole my memories of this because?" She holds out a hand, palm up, as if Sharon could place the answer in it.

"Because he hated Bucky and wanted him to suffer."

Natasha curls her hand into a fist, takes a deep breath, and counts to ten, first in English and then in Russian. "And this man who supposedly loves me so much didn't think I needed to know this? And none of my so-called friends thought so either?"

"I'm sure he thought he was sparing you pain." She rolls her eyes, obviously trying to lighten the mood. "Men are stupid."

"Stupid is the nicest thing I would call it." 

"I know," Sharon says. She wraps a hand around Natasha's and squeezes. "Believe me, I know. I wasn't there when the decision was made, but I told Steve it was bullshit and I wouldn't be a party to it."

"Thank you," Natasha says, laying her other hand over Sharon's and squeezing back. "Thank you."

*

Natasha finds him sitting in the back booth of a bar in Flatbush. He looks up from his pint of beer with a haunted expression she recognizes from her own mirror. 

"Are you the infamous Bucky Barnes?"

"James," he says. "You called me James." 

"Did I?" 

"You were the only one." He looks back down at his glass. She's glad; the weight of his stare was heavy against her skin. When the silence stretches uncomfortably, he says, "Does SHIELD have a job for me?"

She sits down across from him. "I'm not here on behalf of SHIELD."

His flicks a glance up at her, so much hope in his eyes that she thinks she might choke on it. "Yeah?"

"I believe you owe me an explanation," she says, dousing that hope right out. "I'm told we know each other, but I don't remember it."

"Who told you that?" He shifts forward, like he's going to go find whoever it was and punch them a lot. 

"Don't worry, your little boys' club conspiracy of silence wasn't broken."

He nods, taking that in, and leans back. She'd like to say there was something familiar about him, but there just isn't. 

He looks at her again, then down at the table, like he can't bear the sight of her. "Can I buy you a drink?"

She sniffs. "I can buy my own drinks."

He huffs softly and his mouth curves in a rueful half-smile. " _May_ I buy you a drink?"

"No," she says. "Not until you explain."

"There's not much to explain. Leo Novokov used you to get revenge on me."

"But he failed. He's stuck in the Raft for life."

Barnes shakes his head. "No." He raises his glass and gestures at her with it. "This--this is his revenge." He finishes his beer with a long gulp, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. He needs a shave and a haircut, but she can see why she might have been attracted to him. 

Natasha folds her hands together on the tabletop and leans forward. Her smile is unfriendly and full of teeth. "And may I ask why Novokov involved me in his revenge?"

He meets her gaze squarely this time. "Because I love you." 

She sucks in a sharp breath, surprised at the baldness of the statement, and how easily he made it.

"I find that hard to believe," she says, though she doesn't, really.

"I know," he replies. "Nobody believed a gorgeous dame like you would give a loser like me the time of day. Least of all me." He taps his empty glass. "They do say truth is stranger than fiction."

"They say a lot of things," she says, "and most of it's bullshit."

"That's true."

"There's one thing I don't understand."

"Only one?" he asks wryly.

"You say you love me so much but you didn't fight for me. I might not remember, but I know in my heart that if the situation had been reversed, I would never have stopped fighting for you."

"You're right," he says, and that hurts, too, in a way she hadn't expected. She doesn't know this man, even though she was supposedly in love with him, and he with her, but this refusal to fight, this decision to be cowed--it's not who he is, who they are, and it makes her angry.

"Was I not worth fighting for, James?"

The blow lands, and it's his turn to gasp. "I didn't want to cause you any more pain than I already had."

"An admirable sentiment," she says, "but it wasn't your decision to make."

He closes his eyes and bows his head. "I know. I'm sorry."

"I believe you, but I don't forgive you." She doesn't know if she _can_ forgive him. "I'm going to get my memories back," she says. "Because they're mine, and I'm tired of having them taken away from me."

"I know you will," he says. "If anyone can, it's you."

She won't let herself be distracted by the admiration in his eyes, as charming as it is. "But this will always cast the shadow of doubt on what we shared, because I'm always going to wonder why you didn't love me enough to fight for me." He swallows hard, looking like he's been sucker-punched by the Hulk, and she feels a faint twinge of pity. She gets up and gives him a brief nod in farewell. "Oh, and you can keep the pillows."

His bitter laugh follows her out the door.

end


End file.
